Miami County Board of Elections discusses subpoena from Ohio Democratic Party

139,000 pages of sensitive information being sought by plaintiff

MIAMI COUNTY — The Miami County Board of Elections began their meeting on Tuesday afternoon discussing a subpoena that they have been working to comply with that they received from the Ohio Democratic Party, the plaintiff.

Director Bev Kendall mentioned that there appeared to be a discrepancy as to whether or not there would be a confidentiality agreement between the Ohio Secretary of State and the plaintiff. If a confidentiality agreement was in place, the board would not have to redact the personal information contained within the large volume of information being sought.

“To go through 139,000 documents and redact personal identifiers … that would close this office down, in my opinion, for a pretty significant period of time and require us to have a whole bunch of extra help,” board member Bob Huffman said. “It’d take days and days.”

Kendall said it was estimated that it would take 10 people and 800 hours to complete that task.

Huffman advised Kendall and Deputy Director Eric Morgan speak with the Miami County prosecutor and see if the county can establish their own confidentiality agreement with the plaintiff. That way, none of the documents would have to be redacted.

Morgan also noted that there are other counties within the state choosing not to comply with the subpoena and not provide those records due to the large amount of personal information in those requested documents.

“How do you ignore a subpoena from a court?” Huffman said. Huffman advised Kendall and Morgan to see if they have any legal basis to choose not to comply with the subpoena as well.

Also covered during the board’s meeting:

• There have been roughly 2,500 early voters, including 1,031 people coming to the office to vote

• The Miami County Board of Commissioners wants to speak with Kendall, Morgan, and at lease one member of the board of elections about the purchase of e-poll books

• The board also approved the service agreement with the West Milton Rotary for the deployment of the voting machines for the upcoming election for $10,598

• The board of elections is still looking for five more poll workers for the upcoming election